3 



BUI^IyETIN OF THI) STATiJ UNIVERSITY OF IOWA 

NEW SERIES NO. 3a MAY, 1901 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

CHURCH AND STATE SCHOOLS BOTH 
CHRISTIAN 

BACCALAUREATE SERMON 

Delivered June 3, 1900 

By 

GEORGE E. MACLEAN, Ph.D., LL.D. 

President of the State University of Iowa 




PUBWSHED BY THE UNIVERSITY 

Iowa City, Iowa 

190 1 



THE UNIVERSITY BUI,I<ETINS PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY ARE 
ISSUED EVERY SIX WEEKS DURING THE ACADEMIC YEAR, AT LEAST SIX 
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BULLETIN OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA 

NEW SERIES NO. 32 MAY, 1901 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

CHURCH AND STATE SCHOOLS BOTH 
CHRISTIAN 

BACCALAUREATE SERMON 

Delivered June 3, 1900 



By 
GEORGE E^ MACLEAN, Ph.D., LL.D. 

Ppesident of the State University of Iowa 




PUBI,ISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY 

Iowa City, Iowa 

1901 



THE UNIVERSITY BUIyLETINS PUBI,ISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY ARE 
ISSUED EVERY SIX WEEKS DURING THE ACADEMIC YEAR, AT LEAST SIX 
NUMBERS EVERY CALENDAR YEAR. ENTERED AT THE POST OFFICE AT 
IOWA CITY AS SECOND CLASS MAIL MATTER. 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 



The Disciples were called Christians first in Antioch. — 
Acts, XI, 36. 

In the nineteenth century we have become realists rather 
than nominalists. We quote with approval, "What's in a 
name?" The educational dictum is, "Study things before 
words." When we study words with the spirit of the 
realist we trace them to their origin. They become entities 
redolent of reality. All unconscious, we bring the cycle 
round to the truth of nominalism and realism combined. 

There are life and history in a word. The Antiochian 
sneering appellation "Christian," representing the view of 
the highest culture of the Orient and Occident blended in 
Antioch, was antithetical to the simple esoteric name 
"disciple." Disciple was a schoolman's term used by the 
philosophers, implying the devotion and obedience of a 
pupil to his teacher and intimating that Christianity is 
essentially educational. The companions of Jesus, the 
members of the New Testament church, gave themselves 
the five names, disciples, followers, believers, brethren, and 
saints. The three times the word "Christian" is admitted 
to the New Testament are practically quotations from 
the lips of pagans. Slowly the term of shame is transmitted 
into one of glory, and then, in the essential meaning 
of the word, is synonomous with disciple. A Christian is 
literally "one belonging to the Christ." Christ in turn is 
the Greek for the Hebrew "Messiah," meaning "the 
Anointed." Christ is not the name of Jesus, but his title, 
"Jesus the Anointed." Jesus was too great to become the 
founder of a sect. Jesus-ites could not spring from Him 



2 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

who was endowed with the title "The Anointed." Jesus 
was not the founder of Christianity as he is superficially 
believed to be, but he found it. Christianity commenced 
with the creation, when the morning stars sang together, 
and all the sons of God rejoiced. It was founded by God 
the Father when he "saw that all things were good." 
God-inspired, it has welled up in the hearts of the faithful 
of all ages. There was the church of the Jews. There was, 
according to St. Peter, the church of the Gentiles, roomy 
enough for Greeks, Romans, Orientals, and Barbarians, 
for "God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he 
that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted 
with Him." 

In the poesy of the Orient, "the Anointed" meant orig- 
inally "the anointed by God's spirit, the inspired one." 
He became the natural leader who, later, by the ceremony 
of outward anointing, was recognized as prophet, that is, 
the poet of righteousness — or priest, that is, the man of 
prayer in the sense of aspiration and sacrifice — or as king, 
that is, the politically endowed, God's and the people's 
representative. In Jesus the Christ, or Anointed, to whom 
the spirit of God was given without measure, coalesced the 
poet, the prayer, the divine king or people's president. 
"For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness 
dwell, and in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead 
bodily." 

In the personality of the Peasant of Galilee we reach the 
culmination of the evolution of the inspired ones of human- 
ity. As related to the ages before Him, He was, in His 
words, "One who came to fulfil." As related to the ages 
to follow Him, He was the type of a new humanity that 
with accelerated evolution should develop from the old, 
under the anointing or inspiration not only of the Father's 
spirit, but also of the example and spirit of the Christ. In 
scriptural language, "When the fulness of time was come, 
God sent forth His Son made of a woman * * * that 



ESSENTIAL CHRISTIANITY 3 

we might receive the adoption of sons, and because we are 
sons, God has sent forth the spirit of His Son into our 
hearts, crying, Abba, Father," 

The revision of the pagan meaning of the term "Christ- 
ian," by which essentially it was made synonomous with 
"disciple or learner" of Jesus the Christ or Inspired, 
reconciled the church to the use of the term. But the 
pagan meaning survives side by side with the essential 
one. "Christian" is still a term of reproach, not only on the 
part of Moslem and Buddhist, but in certain circles of 
culture. The religion of Jesus has been confounded with 
the Christianity sometimes merely crystalized, or better, 
petrified in dogmas and churches. The pagan name has 
shrivelled and constricted the thing until even historians 
like Gibbon, Draper, and even Andrew White, seem to 
exclaim, "Christianity, what crimes have been committed 
in thy name!" Let our reply be: "To the essential 
Christianity! " "Christian" is the synonym, not antithesis 
of disciple, follower, believer, brother,saintof the Holy Jesus, 
known as the Christ, the Anointed or Inspired One of his- 
tory past, and Inspirer and Type of humanity to come. 

The recent watchword has been "Back to Christ," 
amended to "Forward to Christ," but the true word is 
"Introspice! Circumspice, Suspice! " To the Christ, the 
Inspirer within, about, above us! 

Beecher said, "Christianity is a soul-power, an invisible, 
immutable power in the world." In Beecher's time, 
Christianity was passing from the static to the dynamic 
stage. It is now rising to its original biologic form, and 
we say, "Christianity is a soul-life infused through the 
spirit of a sempiternal Christ, not only in the individual, 
but in nature and society. We do not simply imitate the 
Jesus of the first century and ask, "What would Jesus do," 
but we are inspired by the Christ spirit to live a Jesus 
today. 

The Christian is "more than the man of creed or cult or 



4 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

church or conduct. He is the man of life, a disciple in the 
Anglo-Saxon quaint phrase, "A knight of learning of the 
living Christ," He is a man of growth in grace and in 
the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The 
inspired man does not despise instruction. Coleridge was 
taught logic in his study of Milton's poetry, and held 
that the poet must be the strictest logician. The greater 
the inspiration, the wider and higher is the field of instruc- 
tion. Pseudo-genius is an inflated idler, that disdaining 
common things soars high in the thin atmosphere of vanity, 
at last to fall in failure. God-given genius toils and soars 
to heights or falls to depths, seeking truth and bearing life — 
"A creature not too bright or good 
For human nature's daily food." 

Essential Christianity has been, and ever must be, a 
friend to education. The new education is largely the 
result of child study, and as modern psychology and philoso- 
phy show, must be essentially Christian. Aristotle pointed 
out that the aim of education was the cultivation of char- 
acter. Our latest research apart from the influences of 
historical Christianity brings to the same thing. Education 
is not primarily the imparting of knowledge, but the devel- 
opment of the mysterious soul of the child. It is a growth 
that the teacher watches like a gardener. He tends it with 
the truth as a fertilizer; he waters the unfolding soul with 
his sympathies ; he detects the law of its individual growth ; 
with the sunshine of his personality, and radiance of his 
love he brings to full bloom the character of the child. 
Physical training and parental discipline are a trellis 
to support temporarily the soul plant, and to teach it 
adjustment. 

In these days of evolution the law of service of others, 
or self-sacrifice if need be, is inculcated in the individual 
as he is seen to spring from the root of a common human- 
ity. He is but one plant in a garden of plants of like 
order, living with and for others as well as himself, and 



NEW EJDUCATION CHRISTIAN 5 

bearing fruit for the gardener. I^ife immortal deepens the 
significance revealing this earthly paradise as an antitype 
of a heavenly paradise. Let us reiterate, we are speaking 
of the deliverances of modern pedagogy, and not of pro- 
fessed Christianity, The oneness therefore of essential Christ- 
ianity and of modern education appears. 

Of necessity, progressive education is Christian education. 
Through the pathway of science we have come to see, in 
the words of Professor Levi Seeley, that "the coming of 
Christ marked a new era both in religion and education." 
It is suggestive that the modern authorities on pedagogy 
have their chapters on Christian education, and point out 
the pedagogical truth of Christ's teaching. Seeley follow- 
ing the commonplace authorities says, "The central peda- 
gogic truth of Christ's teaching is this, all education is for 
the individual." He contrasts Oriental education as 
having for its end the interests of the state, and Christian 
education as having for its end the interests of the individual. 

Let us in the interest of the whole truth revert to the 
principles of our discourse and not follow the pedagogists 
as they tend to follow the theologists in the error of putting 
Christ's teaching into the place of the Christ-life. Professor 
Seeley 's dogma, supposed to be drawn from the Christ's 
teaching that all education is for the individual, and his 
glib contrast between the interests of the State and the 
interests of the individual contradict the utter self sacrifice 
in life and death of the individual Jesus for all humanity. 
Christian education makes the most of the individual in 
order to make the most of the state as a free government 
in a universal brotherhood of man that shall be a king- 
dom of heaven on earth. 

All our studies to this point have established it philosoph- 
ically that essential Christianity would educate scien- 
tifically, and that scientific modern education must be 
essentially Christian. 

If we review the subject of Christian education histori- 



6 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

callyinthis century, and particularly in the United States, 
we shall be brought to the same conclusion. The fathers 
of the republic, in the ordinance of 1787 for the govern- 
ment of the Northwest Territory, the Magna Charta of the 
public school system, recognizing that "religion, morality, 
and intelligence are necessary to good government and 
human happiness," made it law that these "should forever 
be encouraged." Public education was by this organic act 
to be Christian education. With a practice sometimes 
more, sometimes less Christian, not until recently has the 
subject been cleared up. The provision that church and 
state should be separated, the traditions of church and 
college education for a long time set forth a contradiction 
between sectarian and secular education, between a Christ- 
ian or religious, and an unchristian or godless education. 
At length we have learned that separation between church 
and state does not imply antagonism. A deeper philoso- 
phy and higher Christianity have shown that the distinction 
between secular and sacred is nominal. There has devel- 
oped a positive Christly charity immeasurably superior to 
the old boasted negative toleration. A severe secta- 
rianism has yielded to a complacent and partially co- 
operative denominationalism. A larger Americanism, con- 
scious of a new nationality with a mission for humanity, 
roots itself in a basic spiritual life, and is not afraid that 
religion and morality in the schools will trench upon 
liberty of conscience and degenerate into sectarianism. By 
common consent therefore, the contrast now is not between 
the Christian and the Godless state school, but between 
the church and the state school both essentially Christian. 
Did I say contrast? I should have said comparison. lyCt 
us go further. We hope the day is at hand when we may 
expect co-operation between the church and the state 
school, each having its sphere, each lending a happy in- 
fluence to the other and a lustre to our common American 
education. 



AMERICAN EDUCATION CHRISTIAN 7 

I^et us be thankful that the various churches in the era 
of America's continental expansion not only planted their 
sanctuaries upon the prairies, but also their schools, and 
especially their colleges, in order that the old civilization 
and Christianity might not perish amidst the poverty of the 
pioneers. 

I^et those of us who are churchmen be equally thankful 
that the strength and treasury of the churches, all but 
over-taxed to sustain missions the globe around, are not 
required single-handed to support church schools and 
colleges, but these are supplemented and comf)lemented by 
the public schools maintained by the service and treasury 
of the state. In fact, a silent conquest of the public 
school has been made by religion. As it has been done 
without impairing freedom or liberty of conscience, there is 
no friend of humanity who may not rejoice. 

Despite philosophical demonstration, and the historical 
survey of tendencies, some excellent person with more of 
denominational zeal than knowledge, or some extreme 
sentimentalist, suspicious of any religious enthusiasm, will 
object that the speaker's wishes are the father to his 
thoughts. Christian education by church or state must 
meet the test of the practical. What are the facts? On 
the one hand, the church schools are belittled as sectarian 
and accused of narrowness and bigotry; on the other, the 
state schools are denounced as Godless and as promoting 
indifference, skepticism, and even immorality. An im- 
partial study of the curricula, faculties, students, and 
alumni of both classes of institutions will show little 
difference. The older so-called church colleges like 
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Amherst, Williams, and the 
oldest imitators of these in the West, have opened their 
curricula to the widest extent to the modern secular 
studies. They have reduced to a minimum, if they have 
not abolished, as requirements the specifically Christian 
and ethical branches. The same liberties are granted to 



8 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

the students that are bestowed in the freedom of the state 
institutions. These colleges are eager to deny that they 
are sectarian in spirit, or even denominational to any 
appreciable extent in administration, Creedal tests are not 
applied in the selection of professors, and occasionally 
men known not to be adherents of Christianity are 
tolerated on their faculties. The supreme tests are those 
of character and scholarship. 

The census of the students in the older church colleges 
does not show a larger proportion of membership in 
church than in state institutions. With the exception of 
the survival here and there of compulsory chapel attend- 
ance, the religious life of the students is free and 
voluntary. In matters of conduct, if one could rely upon 
the press reports, there is apt to be more of the mediaeval 
if not of the absolutely immoral behavior in these institu- 
tions that by tradition have been supposed to have peculiar 
prerogatives over-riding the common law of the land. 

Proportionally more of the alumni of the church schools 
are found in the holy ministry as will be natural where 
parental influence has destined youth for the ministry and 
selected the college with that in view. The proportionate 
decrease of alumni entering the ministry in recent years 
may or may not be significant on account of the emphasis 
of the need of Christian men in all walks of life. The 
recognized leadership of the alumni in these colleges in 
church and state bears witness to the scientific advance 
and maintenance of manliness in these seats of learning. 

Originally the state institutions practically copied the 
curricula of the older church institutions, including the 
specifically religious studies. More speedily than their 
elder sisters they ceased to require these studies, but for 
the most part they have not ceased to maintain them or in 
the most modern times to offer electives pertaining even 
to Biblical literature, languages and history. 

The character as well as the scholarship of the faculties 



STATE EDUCATION CHRISTIAN 9 

has been pre-eminent, and with occasional exceptions, it 
has turned out that the members of the faculties were 
men of religious life and church membership. A series of 
denominational colleges could be gathered from the 
student body in a state university and generally there 
would be more students of a given denomination than in 
the largest church college in the state. 

The students in the earlier years were required to attend 
chapel, those having conscientious scruples being excused. 
In the interest of having no discrimination and in 
harmony with the tendency to make voluntaryism the 
responsible center of development of religion and charac- 
ter, the compulsory attendance at chapel was abolished. 
The voluntary religious activities of professors and 
students, the various religious and philanthropic associa- 
tions have greatly multiplied. Student conduct, subject 
chiefly to faculty counsel and primarily to the civil law, 
has been for the most part exemplary. Self government 
and a high sense of moral responsibility resting upon the 
code of honor have developed. 

The alumni while furnishing a smaller quota to the 
holy ministry have furnished many able christian laymen, 
leaders in their communities, and have made a noticeable 
contribution to the service of the state. The applied 
Christianity of a representative of these institutions, of our 
university, appears in the words of one of our brilliant and 
beloved graduates, Mr. lyowden, in his address at the anni- 
versary of the Grant Club of Des Moines: "And oh! the 
ideal democracy of those college years we spent in Iowa's 
ancient capital! Better than any equation the mathe- 
matical works contained, was the uniform equation 
between the student's status and the student's worth. 
Better than the fierce war of competition which economics 
taught us, was the co-operation we practiced — and co- 
operation already begins to soften to rigors of competitive 
strife. Better than the doctrine of evolution which our 



10 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

science proved, was our own experience that when being 
mounted up to man, love came into the universe to shield 
the weak. Better than the Ideal Republic of Plato, which 
came from out the passages of his stately prose in outlines 
so clear they seemed to be seen through Athens' air, was 
the actual republic which had its seat within the campus 
at the newer 'Athens of Iowa.' I see some of my old 
friends and class-mates about me tonight, and I call them 
to witness that for happy, hopeful, helpful years we shall 
never see their like again. It was, as I have said, the ideal 
democracy." 

The nineteenth century amidst its unexampled activ- 
ities has witnessed the upheaval of elemental forces. 
We have been wont to dwell upon the political revolutions 
and wars from those of Napoleon changing the face of 
Europe, through those remaking the continent of Asia and 
at this moment of Africa, to those of the United States 
changing the balance of the hemispheres. To us indeed, 
"the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as 
the small dust of a balance." "Behold!" in these last 
days "we take up the isles as a very little thing." With 
Whitman, we sing the song of science and invention and 
all the conquests of commerce. 

The gigantic form of democracy leads the much praised 
hosts of progress. Before the supreme influences of the 
century, often unheeded, ever changing or progressing in 
form, irradiating the portentous face of democracy, have 
been Christianity and education. When they are blended 
in Christian education, they become the pillar of cloud by 
day and the pillar of fire by night to guide the century's 
pilgrims . 

There is a famous painting entitled "Philosophy and 
Religion." In the center sits an old man of noble mien 
bent over open tomes and manuscripts piled about him. 
At his side are retorts and alembics speaking of science. 



ADDRESS TO CIvASSES H 

The sage has sought wisdom and immortality in scholarship. 
His death moment is at hand, and as his head is about to 
fall forward, his whole form bespeaking dissatisfaction and 
failure, his eye lights up with faith as it catches sight of 
the long unobserved picture upon the wall of the Madonna 
and Christ-child. 

The dying scholar is transformed into the wise man. In 
the moment his heart is open to the simple story of divine 
love revealed in the mysterious but common mother-love 
and in the sweetness of child innocence with its possibilities 
of purity, virtue, and perfection through growth and suffer- 
ing. Anointed by the Christ-spirit the old man becomes an 
"inspired one" and full of hope in death. 

The world in thesp pessimistic times burdened with 
knowledge and "problems" needs "inspired men" and 
inspired and instructed youth with courage to live. Have 
faith in the simple story pictuted on the walls of history in 
the Gospels, and inwrought in the nature of man and 
things. Seek the Christ- spirit's inspiration. 

ADDRESS TO CLASSES. 

Membeis of the classes of 1900 : With your classes the 
nineteenth century is rounded out. Marvelous are the 
changes in college life in matters of morals and religion 
since the opening of this century in the colleges of 
America. It is a notorious fact that at the close of the 
eighteenth century open infidelity prevailed at Yale, and its 
sister colleges were little better. It is reported that when 
the elder President Dwight became president there was but a 
handful of students who would own the name of Christian. 
Not only was religion a subject of derision supposed to be 
forever exploded, but debauchery and drunkenness were 
prevalent. Compulsion, with its attendant hypocrisy, 
was the law with reference to every college duty. Volun- 
taryism with its joy of freedom and with its development 
of the sense of responsibility is a child of the Christ's 



12 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Spirit of Jesus, with His "Whoever will," and of the 
modern pedagogy . Contrast the old college with its rules and 
regulations, and with its assigned work, with the freedom 
of your self-government, and with your numberless volun- 
tary associations grouped about the elective courses. In 
the best moods and the tender moments of this com- 
mencement season, touched by gratitude to your profes- 
sors and to the bounty of Iowa, may you consecrate your- 
selves to the maintenance and elevation of the ethical and 
religious standards of your Alma Mater. 

In this era of our new development, under the liberality 
of the state, may you continue to prove that it is men and 
not moneys that make institutions. May each of you of 
whom it may not heretofore have, been true, become a 
disciple who need not be ashamed to be called a Christian. 
May those of you who bear that sacred name live out its 
best meaning and remember that Christian education is not 
confined to the college but is continuous. May the symbol 
of two circles ('00) designating the classes of 1900, classes 
I shall never forget as being the first to pass out under my 
presidency here, remind you of infinity and perfection and 
of the possible destiny of your personalities through 
Christian education. 

It is mine in behalf of Faculties and of the whole Univer- 
sity family to bid you God-speed today. But it was another 
President who welcomed you to the University. He was a 
noble specimen of Christian education in home, church, 
college , and country. In the golden autumn, under yonder 
oaks, you laid that fine face and form to rest. But his manly 
spirit, death-crowned, works on in the University, and its 
voice from out the infinities may be among the first to 
welcome you to the higher life. 



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